When I hark back to my childhood, I can just about reach out and grasp the wistful, fleeting notes of the theme from the Andy Griffith Show with the yearning of an old woman towards the precious relics enshrined in the dusty, airless attic of her lost youth. This TV program was first broadcast in […]

As I finally succumb to my armchair this Christmas Eve—the children having crawled eagerly into bed after dining gleefully on apple cider and red sprinkled cupcakes and checking Santa’s last position with NORAD (see link below) one last time—I know this will be a week to remember for a very long time. I’m really feeling […]

Four months ago, when I virtually knocked on the door of the “mommy blogosphere”, I did so with the blind ignorance of a new neighbor introducing herself with a plate of daintily presented bonbons. I was quick to learn that what lay behind it was more like a stadium full of adrenaline-pumped hockey moms in […]

I’ll never forget the day I signed on the dotted line at the age of 44, consenting to an amniocentesis, and feeling like Christopher Walken in the 1978 film Deer Hunter, putting a gun to my head while in a smoke-filled den during a big stakes game of Russian (Miscarriage) Roulette. I couldn’t help feeling […]

Like every other parent around the civilized world—I’m pig-sick of lurking fearfully in school hallways, armed with a bottle of hand sanitizer, wondering if today is the day we’ll be hosting an unwanted, invisible guest coming home from school to play havoc with our health. When I was growing up, the scary demons of childhood […]

It’s taken a few seasons, but I’ve learned that sepia-toned, bittersweet nostalgia—rather than Christmas cake with mulled wine—comprises the holiday fare of midlife moms. And like the best Christmas pudding, fine cheese or wine, it ages well with each passing Christmas. This year, Alex is seven, Lizzie is four—and I am forty-nine. I’m excitedly rubbing […]

It’s early Sunday evening and already I’m feeling the creeping dread that grows as the night wanes—Frank must return to Silicon Valley in the morning, and a Grind that is no longer satisfied with hard work. It must have blood, bone and breath. Any woman who married and had her children after 40 is no […]

When I started hanging out with baby Alex at the playground at 43, I remember thinking that—sometime during a surreal, Rip Van Winkle-style afternoon nap—I must have landed the role of understudy for Nicole Kidman’s part in the 2004 film Stepford Wives (see link below). Although many may prefer the historical 1975 film, it was […]